This blog consists of my experiences while serving my mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Daejeon Korea starting in January 2012 - July 2013.

Monday, 2 April 2012

2nd week in Daejeon, South Korea

April 1, 2012

HEY FAMILY/EVERYONE!!!!

So Korea gave me a VERY warm welcoming! My second night in Korea, woke up with 13 mosquito bites! and then got poured on with rain…and we didn't have any umbrellas! hahaha~ and then it was SUPER windy too. Hahaha~ gotta love Korea! :P Their driving…a little scary. Some people run red lights ALL the time, and you really have to watch the roads when you walk. ANYWAYS, Korea is A Great place though! :) I love it here. The people are SO awesome and cute! :)

This week has been SO crazy!! I love the Lord's work!! It has been a little tough on me emotionally, but I am getting on with life, and just trying my best to devote all of my time to the Lord. My Birth place is in Yuseong, Daejeon. My "mommy" is Sister Miller! :) She is awesome! The Lord has really blessed me. My first day as a 'real' missionary, we had a lesson!!! :) I extended a commitment to our investigator to be baptized; the investigator declined but we are hoping the investigator will say yes as we teach them more. (it was only our second meeting with her). Also, we did a lot of jundoing! (street contacting) my first day jundoing, was mostly my Dungpanja (companion) doing it…second time we did it, I actually tried to do my best speaking to them. I got a few street lessons in!! :) also, now I just really need to work on learning how to listen…I cannot for the life of me understand what they are saying to me! We do a lot of walking, and bussing! I am still trying to figure out how the busses work here! haha~ and then, I try to do language study on the buses all the time…we are given a little black book full of sentences we can use to teach and dano to learn…and usually people finish it in 2 transfers…I am trying to reach that goal…but am horrible at doing it. Dano is easy to memorize…it's the sentences that are killing me :(. But I am trying my best.

Also, yesterday, Sunday was really an emotional day for me. I was really frustrated with myself, and upset at myself. So I was really questioning if this is where I am suppose to be. I said a little prayer to Heavenly Father to help me. At first I didn't feel anything, but through out the day, Heavenly Father dropped little tender mercies along the way! :) We went to church, and I got even more frustrated, because I could not understand anything that was being said to me :( But when we were teaching Gospel Principles, when my Dungpanja asked me to bear my testimony, I felt the love of the Saviour, and Heavenly Father. I knew this is where I needed to be.

So during sacrament, I pulled out my little notebook, and wrote down the words I could not understand, as I did that, I was blessed and started to understand a little more. And then, after sacrament meeting, We had one of Sister Miller's investigators baptized! My first baptism in the Mission! even though this is not my investigator, I was sooo happy. As he was being baptized, I had a voice come into my head saying "This is what Missionary work is about! You are bringing souls unto Christ. You are giving them Salvation! How great is your joy?!". I started to cry and so did Sister Miller :). She then also said "This is what Missionary work is All about!". I was so happy!! :) hehehe!

During our baptism service, Sister Miller and I did a musical number. She sang "I'm trying to be like Jesus" in Korean, and I played the piano. I was messing up pretty bad, and I said a little prayer, and the next thing I knew was my playing became smooth! Goodness I love Heavenly Father!

And then for our companionship study, Sister Miller went through PMG page 10 about successful missionaries. We read through it, and she suggested to me to NOT compare myself to anyone else! I am guilty of that already! hahah~ But I will work harder to NOT do that! So that was uplifting to me, and we were invited over to a member's house for dinner. We arrived, and their kids are sooo cute, and then our mission ward leader stopped by as well as another family in our ward, so we ended up having a mini party! :) the ward members were very patient with me. And I was starting to be able to understand them more and more when they spoke Korean to me! :) The Lord was really blessing me, and I am very thankful to him for that! I will continue work hard to learn Korean! I am very excited to be here. This week is JAMMED PACKED FULL! We are soo happy. WE are trying to set up another baptismal date for one of our investigators. Hopefully we will be able to do it early May. Because we had General Conference next week, and then two weeks after that we have Stake Conference as well, so it will be hard to get a baptism in between there (They do their baptisms on Sundays).

So about my companion: She is from Rexburg Idaho. She is the oldest of 4 kids. She has siblings that are triplets, two brothers and one sister. Her mom is from Colorado, and her Dad is from Idaho. Her dad is a Pharmacist! :) Her mom has an elementary school teacher degree, and she is working on a book to hopefully publish soon! :) My companion has one year left of university, and she goes to BYU-I! She wants to be a book publisher, and loves reading! She loves music, and she plays the Oboe, sings, and plays the english horn! :) She is 23, around 5ft 0'', and has brown hair, hazel eyes. She is also going to be leaving in 4 months!!! :( She is AWESOME! & a very Hard worker for sure! Loves watching movies…hahah~

We were talking about movies yesterday, and I recommended some music and movies to her. Mostly K-pop music haahha~. We found that Kpop music is pretty clean, so yea~ and since we are in Korea, we ALWAYS hear music playing around in the streets hahaa~. And right now I am listening to music because we are in a cafe hahaha~.

Oh and don't worry, I haven't had any problems with the food yet. I haven't had any nuts or shell fish in my food. :) LOVE THE FOOD THOUGH! :) hehehe~

I don't really have much else to say! Except that I LOVE YOU ALL VERY VERY MUCH! and can't wait to call home to say HI :) (btw, when is Mother's day?). Can't wait to hear from you all!! :) LOVE YOU VERY MUCH!